Red-light bandits

EXAMINER EDITORIAL WRITER

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 26, 1998

1998-04-26 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA -- WITH a bow to hysterics, the state Assembly has voted to shut down surveillance cameras that are designed to catch red-light runners in the act at busy intersections. As the life-saving programs went down to defeat, the legislative chamber was filled with opponents' cries of

"Big Brother" and "Germany in the 1930s."

Such demagoguery indicates that the utterers are either fools or knaves. "Big Brother" isn't peering into anyone's bedroom, and any comparison of a means to catch traffic lawbreakers with Nazi Germany is ludicrous, at best.

On Thursday, the Assembly came up four votes short of approving SB 1136 by Sen. Quentin Kopp, I-San Francisco, which would extend a three-year test of the cameras. Fortunately, the solons will have another chance to OK the bill, which has passed the state Senate. Otherwise the enabling law will expire in January.

Lives and limbs are at stake. In San Francisco during the last five years, red-light runners have caused nearly 4,000 accidents, resulting in more than 20 deaths and 6,600 injuries.

Elite runners start the first wave of Bay to Breakers 2018San Francisco Chronicle

Coyote trots around Golden Gate parkTed Andersen, SFGATE

Since it began in October 1996, a pilot program of five surveillance cameras in The City has reduced the number of red-light runners by half, and collisions by 10 percent, at targeted intersections. More than 7,000 citations have been issued.

We're as concerned as anyone about government intrusion on citizens' privacy. But motorists who drive on public streets do so at their own choosing. They are licensed by the state and obligated to obey the laws.

The cameras are surrogates for eyes of police officers who, after all, have the right to stop and question a suspected lawbreaker. The cameras are intended to preserve the lives of law-abiding citizens, which is a civil right everyone recognizes.

And yet, the motor mouths run on. Assemblyman Bernie Richter, R-Chico, said the automatic cameras reminded him of "Germany in the 1930s." And Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, said, "This is one of the most (troubling) Big Brother issues we're going to see this year."

Remedial reading is in order. Richter should brush up on the horrors of the Holocaust, and Cardoza should check out a copy of George Orwell's "1984" to learn the nature of a true totalitarian state.&lt;